Thursday, January 10, 2013

We're wealthy but unhealthy -- Jan. 10, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

It hardly seems fair.

Even though the United States is the wealthiest nation on
earth and spends the most per capita on health care, we’re sicker and die
earlier than people in other high-income countries, a new report has found.

Nor is our health disadvantage the result of America’s high
poverty rate, our racial and ethnic diversity, or our immigrant population.
Recent immigrants are in better health than the native-born, says “U.S. Health in International Perspective:
Shorter Lives, Poorer Health,” released Wednesday by the National Research
Institute and Institute of Medicine.

The report goes beyond others that have chronicled our
broken health care system to look at diseases, injuries and behaviors throughout
life. It’s a 378-page wake-up call about our big, fat, stressed American
lifestyle, available for reading from the National Academies Press, www.nap.edu.

“Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries
and illnesses than people in other high-income countries,” the report says. We
lag behind: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands,
and the United Kingdom.

It’s shocking to think that people in other countries enjoy
longer, healthier lives than we do, and, says Dr. Steven H. Woolf, professor of
family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University, it’s unnecessary.

“Americans are dying
and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other
high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health,” says
Woolf, who led the panel that wrote the report.

The report recognizes that we have more people who are
uninsured and in poverty and that our health care system is fragmented. It also
suggests as possible factors for the health gap the pressured work and child
care schedules of American families, our car-oriented neighborhoods, and
traffic congestion that leaves us little time or energy to exercise or to shop
for nutritious food.

Even the rugged individualism that made America great may be
to blame. Fiercely independent Americans are more likely than our foreign
counterparts to engage in risky behaviors. We drive with seatbelts unbuckled,
ride motorcycles with the wind in our hair, eat tons of fatty food, occupy the
couch, keep our arsenals of guns unlocked, abuse drugs and have unprotected
sex.

And so we die earlier even though we’re now less likely to
smoke and may drink less than people in other high-income countries.

Our life expectancy is lower because we lose so many people
before age 50. Once Americans hit 75, though, they live longer and are less
likely to die from cancer and stroke than their foreign counterparts.

Most Americans have no idea that we long have had the
highest infant mortality rate among high-income countries or that American
adolescents have the highest rates of death from traffic accidents and
homicide.

The United States is at or
near the bottom in such key health areas as teen pregnancy and sexually
transmitted infections, prevalence of HIV and AIDS, drug-related deaths,
obesity and diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and disability.

Wealth and education do not guarantee good health or long
life. Our “haves” are sicker and die sooner than “haves” in other developed
countries. Non-Hispanic whites in the United
States who are well educated and have health insurance lag comparable groups in
other affluent countries.

The report calls for more research, more public awareness
and a national discussion of the American health disadvantage. We already know what
we need to do, but sometimes we need a nudge.

Higher taxes on cigarettes re-enforced a lot of individual resolve
to stop smoking. Efforts by government to rein in our “rights,” such as to purchase
giant soft drinks, elicit cries of “nanny state” but may curb sales.

First lady Michelle Obama harvested too much criticism along
with the vegetables from her White House garden. We should stand behind her efforts
to get kids moving.

It won’t be easy to change behavior. Even the 2010 federal health
law explicitly supports the Second Amendment right to own guns and prohibits health
providers from collecting or disclosing information related to gun ownership.

Our national discussion on health must go beyond laws to individual
behavior. It can start when President Barack Obama delivers his State of the
Union address. We haven’t a life to waste.

1 comment:

Ms. Mercer brings us some very interesting but disturbing info about our health, as compared with other advanced nations. I agree, we need to work on this issue and the trick is to improve our life expectancy without impinging on our freedom to behave as we like. For example, we may live longer if we stop driving cars or eating hamburgers, but is it worth it? Surely there are some things we can do, as Ms.Mercer points out, that we can all elect to do on our own and not rely on government control. Let's do it.